BENAZIR BHUTTO, the former Pakistan prime minister, yesterday defied death threats from Taliban terrorists to make an emotional return to her family home.

The leader of the Pakistan People’s party, who narrowly escaped a suicide bomb attack that killed more than 130 people when she returned from exile to Karachi just over a week ago, flew to Larkana, her ancestral village, and visited the shrine where her brother and father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, are buried.

Despite suffering an ear infection from bleeding caused by the October 18 bomb blasts, she walked among several thousand supporters who greeted her at Sukkur airport, close to her family’s estates in southern Sindh province. She discarded the protection of her bullet-proof Toyota Land Cruiser to wave to villagers who lined the route to her father’s Taj Mahal-style mausoleum.

Security advisers led her cavalcade early yesterday through Karachi’s deserted streets. This was in stark contrast to the jubilant scenes that greeted her return from exile when hundreds of thousands lined the streets. Her guards wanted to avoid exposing her again to large crowds. They sped through the city in a convoy of tinted-windowed vehicles flanked by outriders and protected by armed guards.

Bhutto greeted supporters through the sun roof in her new £100,000 Toyota, protected only by two shoulder-height steel screens on each side. As the speeding convoy kicked up a dust cloud, armed villagers flanked the roadsides with their backs to the cavalcade, watching the fields for potential attackers.

After saying prayers at the tomb of her executed father and showering the grave with rose petals, she made a defiant pledge to continue her fight against terrorism. “I’m not afraid of anyone but Allah,” she declared.

Shortly before leaving Karachi she had said she would campaign for democracy to defeat terrorism.

“People are just being butchered and it has to stop, somebody has to find a solution and my solution is let’s restore democracy, let’s give the people education, let’s give the people empowerment, let’s give the people employment,” she said.

Her campaign will be seen as vindication for Britain, which has led the diplomatic push for Bhutto’s return to Pakistan, and for the power-sharing deal with General Pervez Musharraf, the country’s military ruler.

Bhutto argues the lack of democracy in the tribal areas and unpopular ruling tribal elders have boosted support for the Taliban. She plans to introduce local elections and scrap the draconian tribal justice system that allows collective punishment of entire villages.

- Militants in northwestern Pakistan executed 13 people, including six members of the security forces, in retaliation for a crackdown , who had attacked the stronghold of a radical cleric. More than 2,000 Pakistani troops have been fighting Islamists in the Swat valley.

Bhutto's party PPP official site

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